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A simple way to test if your MTA (mail transfer agent such as Exchange) is accepting email is to build the message by hand and watch the response codes from the server.  You can run this from the server console from a command prompt or remotely if you have the SMTP port to the server open.  Remember, once you are in the telnet session, don’t use backspace if you misspell something!  You’ll get an unrecognized command error if you do.  Just press enter and retype your command correctly if you do misspell something.

telnet localhost 25

This will open a telnet window to the server on SMTP port 25 and the server in return will send a 220 response code, the FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name), mail server version, and typically a time stamp as well.  Next you type:

helo

The mail server will respond with 250 response and it’s FQDN and say “Hello”.  You can also use:

ehlo

There is no difference using the commands except that EHLO returns info about the mail server’s capabilities along with the 250 response code such as the maximum SIZE of a messsage for example.  It’s useful to see exactly what your mail server is going to accept from a client.  EHLO is the more recent command by the way.  Pretty much all MTAs out there are going to accept either command nowadays.

This means the mail server is ready to accept more commands.  Now it’s time to begin composing your email:

mail from: joeblow@gmail.com

You should get a 250 response code and say the Send is OK.  Now type who you are sending it to:

rcpt to: joeblowsfriend@gmail.com

You will get a 250 response for the email address.  You can add more recipients by just typing additional lines like above.  Next it’s time to build the body of the message.  Type:

data

and you will get a 354 response code saying you can begin input.  First type a subject line for your message:

subject: Test email

Remember, type this on the very first line and then press <Enter> twice.  Now you can start typing your message body.  Once you are done with your message body, press <Enter> to start a new line and type nothing on this line except for a period.  Then press <Enter> again and you will exit out of the message body and immediately submit the email to the MTA’s queue for delivery.  You should get the test email within seconds if your mail server is working properly!  Make sure to check your Junk E-mail folder just in case your mail server marks your test email as spam.  To exit your telnet session, just type:

quit

and press <Enter> and you’re done.  Simple, right?

I was lucky enough to attend the Microsoft New Efficiency event for Windows Server 2008 R2 on Monday.  It was a limited capacity technical briefing aimed at IT Professionals.  They also had an Exchange 2010 and Windows 7 track at the same time but I chose to attend the Server 2008 R2 track.  It was divided into 4 sections and was hosted by Kevin Saye (kevin.saye@microsoft.com) who is the Pre-sales technical support specialist for Windows Server in this region.  I’ve heard him speak at events before but never had a chance to actually do a QA session with him till now.

So, on to the new stuff in Server 2008 R2 that I found interesting!  This is not a comprehensive list by an means, just the stuff I thought was very useful.  I’ll go over each in detail in the coming days and how it will fit into your enterprise environment.

-Active Directory Administrative Center (ADAC)
-Managed Service accounts
-Active Directory Recycle Bin
-Graphical PowerShell
-Turning off CPU cores to conserve power
-Group policy can now execute Powershell scritpts
-Group policy granularity through item level targeting
-FCI to classify data and take actions on it
-.NET now runs on Server Core installs
-Remote Desktop Services now has multi-monitor support (up to 8 monitors), bi-directional audio (useful for VOIP), and enhanced multimedia support using your local graphics card instead of “screen painting” as it was before.
-DirectAccess with Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 – Extends the network to include remote users instead of just a remote user dialing in via VPN.  Uses the Teredo protocol.  Was able to access the Microsoft intranet site (http://msw) without ever having to dial in and from behind a corporate firewall.  It uses IPsec and it only works with Windows 7 machines which are on the domain. 
-Branch Cache – Caches only the requested data unlike DFS.  Means a lot less space is required unlike DFS which is an exact duplicate.

THE FUTURE
Kevin says expect to see more componentization in MS products.  Expect to moved vhds around on servers like OS, Apps, & Data vhds interchangeably on your VMs.